I am entirely happy with Sitecore 8.0 improvements, except one simple, but quite important thing - new look and feel megalomania. In first place by saying that I mean the way how Sitecore with new Metro-like interface manages space and huge paddings between elements. The maximal impact you may experience when working with Content Editor - content tree and item fields. I got an assumption that it was designed for use on as little as 27" monitors, not less. If you are running Sitecore from a 13-15 inches laptop - you definitely should read this blog post to the end.

Things however are not as bad and the good news is - it can be relatively easy to improve by simply editing CSS files, that Sitecore utilizes - they are located within <web_root>\sitecore\shell\Themes\Standard\Defaultfolder. The bad news is that the folder contains 34 CSS files and some of them have several thousands lines.

So, my dear reader, I have made this dirty job for you and you may download the package that modifies styles, which make spaces as compact as they were in previous versions.

To start with, compare 2 images below. First one shows how Sitecore 8 looks originally, straight after the installation:

And below there is a screenshot of the same screen after applying a Style Adjustments patch. See how content tree became more informative:

There is one small, but quite handy improvement - we all know database selection tool in the right bottom corner. If you click it and enable "Show Database Name"option - by default you'll get a database name, written on a desktop right above this database selector. But it is displayed only when you see clear desktop, as soon as you open Content Editor - this useful label will be hidden underneath the window. So I decided to relocate this label to the bottom bar immediately left from select box. So now you are aware of current database regardless of wether you have a windows open full-size. Here is a screenshot of how it looks like:

There are still other changes across the whole sitecore - windows, popups, dialogs etc. that were improved. Package creation dialog became more compact as the result:

Screenshot below shows the comparison how it was before. In the default view only 2 selected items are able to fit .... eh-h..